


I wonder if devils get nightmares

by Kaylin881



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Episode 159, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 04, brief worms mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 06:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23466964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaylin881/pseuds/Kaylin881
Summary: On the way up to Scotland, Jon tries to give Martin space, to avoid compelling random strangers into giving their statements, and to stay awake. He fails at all but one of those.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 23
Kudos: 383





	I wonder if devils get nightmares

**Author's Note:**

  * For [75hearts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/75hearts/gifts).



> Happy birthday, kit! [Title from "Broken Horses" by The Mechanisms.]

They take the train north out of London the day after Peter Lukas’ death. After the Panopticon, after the Lonely, after Jon opened his mouth and let all of his feelings about Martin spill out in one last, desperate, successful attempt to save him.

They don’t talk about it, about any of it.

They still haven’t talked about it when Basira calls Jon and tells them to get out of town while they can. She gives him directions to one of Daisy’s safehouses, and only falters a little when she says her partner’s name. Jon cuts her off in the middle of telling him where to find the key: he already knows, in one of those useless flashes of information that slip into his brain like drips from a leaking bucket.

They don’t talk about it while Martin spends almost ten minutes at the cash machine outside the train station convincing it to spit out hundreds and fifties from Peter Lukas’ company card. Jon waits next to him, aware that he probably looks like a drugged-up hobo from the way he’s glancing around, jittering with nervous paranoia, but unable to stop himself.

Martin has to be the one to buy the tickets, too, even though people’s eyes still slide over him half the time and he has to repeat himself three times before the woman behind the glass hears him. She has a statement inside her, and Jon doesn’t trust himself to speak to her even just to say, ‘Two for Edinburgh, please.’

On the train, they sit next to each other in silence. The seats are big enough for both of them, but when Martin slides in after Jon he sits down close enough that their knees press together. Jon can’t quite work up the willpower to shift away, even though the awareness of every place where they touch itches in his mind.

He stares out of the window at the fields rushing past because that’s better than looking at Martin’s face and seeing irritation at Jon’s uselessness, or disgust at the way he struggled to control himself back at the station. Either reaction would be understandable. He’s disgusted with _himself_ , for Christ’s sake. It’s pathetic, he knows, that he can’t even speak to a stranger for fear that he’ll accidentally compel them to spill their darkest secrets. He just can’t bear to see it. Not from Martin.

Eventually, despite himself, he falls asleep, the side of his leg still pressed warm against Martin’s under the table and the repetitive rattle of the train lulling him into a false sense of security.

* * *

His dreams are the usual amalgam of recycled statements from the Eye and regular old nightmares. Jon watches as Jordan Kennedy sprays a desperate stream of pesticide into a wasp’s nest, which screams and begins to disgorge dozens of writhing silver worms. Then, in one of those invisible shifts of time and place that happen in dreams, he is in the tunnels beneath the Archives, with no idea when he stopped watching and started running.

Before the worms can finish burrowing into his flesh, the dream shifts again. The tunnel walls begin to close in, crushing and warping the train carriage. Karolina Górka, sitting perfectly still in her seat as the metal bends around her in a twisted embrace, stares back at him with surprising calm. He blinks, and then he is watching as Dr Lionel Elliott stands in a dissection lab, seven almost-human hearts pumping out fountains of crimson onto the cold tiles.

On and on it goes, until he can no longer tell where one dream ends and the next begins. Thick fog obscures the graveyard from Naomi Herne’s statement and Jon finds himself wandering the Lonely, screaming Martin’s name into the uncaring grey mist until his voice goes hoarse.

It feels like hours, or maybe days, later that he hears the distant reply.

 _“Jon! Jon, can you hear me?”_ It’s on the edge of his senses, so faint he could almost be imagining it.

“Martin?”

_“Jon, wake up. Please!”_

What? That’s not how it happened...oh. Right. They already did this. He’s dreaming, and he needs to...

* * *

Jon wakes with a gasp that feels like his first breath of clean air in days. Martin’s worried face, hovering inches from his own, fills his vision.

Almost immediately, Martin sits back in his seat, starting up a stream of relieved babbling that Jon lets wash over him without paying attention. It’s a painfully familiar sound, calling to mind more innocent days when the worst either of them had to worry about was Martin accidentally spilling tea on a stack of files. Jon almost wants to laugh with how much he’s missed it.

“— _breathing_ , Jon,” Martin is saying when his brain catches up to his ears, and perhaps he should have been listening after all.

“Sorry, what?”

“You weren’t! Breathing! And I didn’t know what to do, or how to wake you, and then you said my _name_ and—” Martin is the one struggling to breathe now, and he stops to gulp in air. “You sounded so...lost,” he finishes quietly. “I don’t want to lose you, Jon.”

Jon makes a tiny, wounded noise at that. He reaches out to cover Martin’s hand with his own, the contact soothing an ache in his chest that’s followed him from his dream.

“I—I’m here, Martin,” he says, feeling like an utter idiot as he says it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Martin’s hand shifts, and there’s a moment of terror when Jon is sure he’s said something wrong, and Martin is about to get up and walk away because he can’t stand to look at or touch him anymore. Then Jon’s hand is enveloped in warmth, and he has to take a moment to recalibrate because Martin is _holding his hand_.

It’s not as though it’s the first time. They’d held hands on the way out of the Lonely, not letting go even when the last traces of fog vanished and they were walking down perfectly ordinary London streets. Martin had held on, in fact, until they had to separate to go through the turnstiles at the Tube station, each of them digging out their Oyster cards from their pocket (Martin) or wallet (Jon) to swipe them. Back then, they had had the practical reason, or at least the excuse, of not wanting to wander off from each other in the Lonely. Now, sitting less than a foot apart in a train carriage full of people, there’s no way they could lose track of each other. Martin has no reason to hold Jon’s hand.

Therefore, it follows that Martin is holding his hand...because he wants to be.

The single father sitting across the aisle with his toddler had a childhood encounter with the Spiral and it doesn’t matter. Right here in this moment, nothing else in the world matters. Jon squeezes Martin’s hand, risks a smile, and tries his best to believe in a world where he could deserve this.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] I wonder if devils get nightmares](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26179405) by [Yvonne (connect_the_stars)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/connect_the_stars/pseuds/Yvonne)




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